DIRE predictions of an “ice-free” Arctic have remained popular on the climate change fear-mongering circuit, owing to the psychological and political currency of all things melting and not least the emotional relevance applicable to the fate of the Arctic’s most famous resident and ‘global warming’ mascot – the polar bear.

SOME of the failed Arctic sea-ice predictions by alarmists ‘scientists’ and the fake news media over the years :

POLAR BEAR POPULATION (1981 – 2015)

Polar Bear Population (1981 – 2015)

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POLAR BEAR POPULATION – THE LATEST COUNT!

via Susan Crockford PhD :

Susan Crockford is zoologist with more than 35 years experience, including published work on the Holocene history of Arctic animals. She is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, British Columbia.

It’s long past time for polar bear specialists to stop holding out for a scientifically accurate global estimate that will never be achieved and determine a reasonable and credible ‘best guess’. Since they have so far refused to do this, I have done it for them. My extrapolated estimate of 39,000 (range 26,000-58,000) at 2018 is not only plausible but scientifically defensible.

In 2014, the chairman of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) emailed me to say that their global population size number ‘has never been an estimate of total abundance in a scientific sense, but simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand.’

In my new book, The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened, I contend that this situation will probably never change, so it’s time to stop holding out for a scientifically accurate global estimate and generate a reasonable and credible ‘best guess’. Recent surveys from several critical polar bear subpopulations have given us the information necessary to do this.

These new numbers make it possible to extrapolate from ‘known’ to ‘unknown’ subpopulations within so-called ‘sea ice ecoregions’ (defined in 2007 by polar bear scientists at the US Geological Survey, see Amstrup et al. 2007), as shown below, to update old estimates and generate new ones for never-studied areas.

USGS – Polar Bear Ecoregions

Since the PBSG has so far refused to take this step, I took on the challenge. I contend that an estimate of about 39,000 (range 26,000-58,000) at 2018 is not only plausible but scientifically defensible. See the graph below from my new book:

Global polar bear population size estimates to 2018. From Chapter 10 of The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened (Crockford 2019).

This new estimate for 2018 is a modest 4-6 fold increase over the 10,000 or so bears that existed in the 1960s and after 25 years, a credible increase over the estimate of 25,000 that the PBSG offered in 1993 (Wiig et al. 1995).

However, my new estimate is much larger than the improbable figure of about 26,000 (range 22,000-31,000) offered by PGSG biologists in 2015 (Regehr et al. 2016; Wiig et al. 2015). The scary question is this: what do Arctic residents do if there are actually as many as 58,000?

See my new book (Crockford 2019) for the full rationale and references used to arrive at this figure.

The bottom line: it is scientifically unacceptable for the PBSG to continue to refuse to provide an extrapolated ‘best guess’ global estimate for polar bears, given that the scientifically accurate estimate they crave is essentially unattainable. An estimate of about 39,000 (range 26,000-58,000) at 2018 is not only plausible but scientifically defensible.

This and other anti-regulation blogs are milking a false angle on what’s really happening. Polar bears conflict with civilization not because there are more of them per se, rather that they’re unable to stay on the ice as long, so they head inland for food. It’s the same thing that happens when landlocked habitat is lost to human influences, forcing species to come close to cities. Ice in this case is the driver, but you deny it’s happening because you think people are above the laws of nature.

The Inuits claim to understand the bears more than scientists but they only see LOCAL events. Hunting groups also play into it (they want to kill more bears, regardless). You play on that anti-“elitist” aspect, as if tribes with limited ability to travel are able to see a bigger picture than scientists. It’s just not true.

Over time there will likely be fewer total polar bears, but global warming deniers have no long-term thinking skills, just the ability to duck & dodge from topic to topic, driven by an anti-regulation agenda. They aren’t honest enough to admit that their distaste for regulation is the core issue, not the flaws they cite in scientific research. It’s like people who can’t admit that they’re dumb and crass for smoking, so they cherry-pick medical reports and ignore their own shortcomings.

P.S. Industrial wind turbines are a bad idea in any event, and it’s tiresome to see them criticized by climate-deniers as a scheme to push warming “alarmism” (even though elements of that are true). It’s not a simple issue. See: https://www.google.com/search?q=blight+for+naught

Hey Jamie, just spent several hours reading your articles, (and doing doing the fact checking)
three Q’s:
1. Are you getting your articles published in mainstream media? if not, why not?
2. Would you please publish the (or any) credible research which conclusively identifies the precise percentage of anthroprogenic CO2 alleged to be responsible, in specific degrees for warming?
3. With the hyperventilation over transitioning to “…100% renewables by 2050”, how many square kilometers per country would have to be sacrificed to install the required PV/turbines?
(would like to see if you come up with the same number I have)
Appreciate your work, and look forward to hearing from you.
Cheers, Kraig

P.S. ice core paleo-climate data including Vostock, EPICA, and Law Dome may come under fire when it is proven that researchers; failing to account for atmospheric and compression solubility of CO2, underestimated historic CO2 levels by a factor of 3-5X thus exaggerating current levels as “crisis levels”.